Knowledge Bank

As Robert Putnam writes in Bowling Alone, the American population is facing a decline in their civic engagement, and therefore, greater social capital. He uses technology as the culprit, claiming that people are not as involved in their communities as they used to be. Through the research question How has America's Declining Social Capital Impacted Student Organizations at The Ohio State University? this study sought to analyze his assumption on a contemporary college campus. The hypothesis is that he would be correct, but the downward trend would not be significant. The method used was to collect membership data from individual clubs at Ohio State and use the novel dataset to analyze if his assumptions are consistent with college students amongst a new culture that contains more technology than he could fathom. The key result was the opposite of the hypothesis; students over time increased in their club membership, but not significantly. After the onset of new university-wide policies, students began joining clubs at a higher rate.